What’s the best way to talk about moral issues? This is obviously something that activists worry about a lot, whether their cause is veganism, the environment, climate change, or anything.

According to Joshua Greene, the problem is not lack of basic morality, but in competing moralities. There are many different moral cultures or subcultures, which share among themselves certain ethical ideas which, to them, are obvious. But these ideas differ from those of other moral cultures — the “moral tribes” referred to in the title. Anyone who is interested in this problem, or in moral philosophy and moral psychology in general, should at least take a look at Moral Tribes.

To have a meaningful dialogue, we need to understand how people think about moral issues. In this case, philosophy reflects human psychology, so Greene draws on insights in psychology as well as those in modern ethical philosophy. Greene distinguishes between two distinctly different patterns of ethical thought, which interestingly also reflect the different philosophical schools of thought about how to approach ethics.

Most people form moral judgments quickly, without a lot of thought, based on their intuitions of what is right and wrong. Greene compares this to the “point and shoot” setting on your camera. You form an image of the possible action (say, killing someone) and immediately and intuitively form a judgment about it — killing is wrong, lying is wrong, and so forth. But in other cases, we hesitate, and try to sort things out. What will be the consequences of my action? This is the “manual setting” of your moral judgment.

These two approaches — the quick, intuitive method and the slow, deliberative one — reflect the two chief schools of moral philosophy. There are the Kantians and those arguing for “rights” or universal principles. But there are also those who argue more flexibly in favor of evaluating an action based on its consequences, the “utilitarians” like John Stuart Mill and Jeremy Bentham. Give yourself extra credit if you know that Peter Singer argues in favor of animal liberation on utilitarian grounds, but that Tom Regan argues much the same position on the grounds of rights — “animal rights.”

Most of the time, these kinds of philosophical debates don’t carry much practical significance. But they do become a big deal when different moral tribes interact. This is the tragedy of modern philosophy — not that people lack morality, but that their moral systems are in conflict. Fundamentalists in the U. S. don’t want their children to learn basic biology, while the law commands it — or vice versa, secularists want their children to learn basic biology, but the state forbids the teaching of evolution. Some moral tribes are more individualistic, others more communitarian, still others more (or less) traditional, and so forth.

The intuitive, “point and shoot” morality doesn’t really help us here. Cultures tend to take their own cultural values as intuitive, and then are shocked — shocked! — when other cultures don’t share them. If we want to have a respectful dialogue about different moralities, utilitarianism — the theory that the best action is what has the best consequences — is the “meta-morality” that provides the basis for doing this.

This is an important and valuable book, but it raises some issues which I don’t think the author intended to raise. The main question I’d have for Greene is, what does he think the practical application of this knowledge is? Where, exactly, is Greene taking us? Does he want us to talk to fundamentalist Christians in Kansas that want to prohibit evolution, or to Marxist guerrillas in South America? And what implications do these ideas have for veganism, or the environmental movement, or other movements for social change?

Greene has some good ideas, but I’m not convinced that the case for utilitarianism is quite this straightforward, even on a pragmatic level. If he had tried to explore some of these practical questions, taking some basic liberal issues like (say) evolution and climate change and then trying to apply his principles, the book might have taken a very different direction.

How, for example, would Greene’s ideas apply to the struggle for racial equality in the 1950′s and 1960′s? I’m sure that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., behind the scenes, tried to cajole Southern whites by appealing to their practical side. But this utilitarian approach was only part of the story, and not the most important part. King didn’t say, “I have looked at the benefits of racial equality, and they are far more numerous than the disadvantages”; he said instead, “I have a dream.” He appealed to a basic moral intuition, that racial discrimination is hideous and wrong. He needed to rally his supporters to make sacrifices to advance the cause of racial equality.

Greene has some good insights into the different ways that we talk and think about morality, but there is more here than meets the eye. If he had looked at some possible practical applications for his ideas, it’s possible that his book might have taken a somewhat different turn.

Industrialized animal agriculture is morally and intellectually bankrupt. Society is slowly but increasingly becoming aware of the cruel, unnatural, and environmentally harmful aspects of factory farms. But what is going to replace it?

Well-known food intellectuals such as Michael Pollan, Mark Bittman, Joel Salatin, and Jonathan Safran Foer have advocated returning to localized, more traditional ways of raising animals. Encouraged by some environmentalists and even some animal welfare supporters, nonindustrial animal agriculture has grown tremendously in the past decade. Across the United States, we have seen a lot more backyard chickens, grass-fed beef, and humanely treated pigs — what many vegans refer to derisively as “happy meat.”

This is where James McWilliams’ brilliant and articulate book The Modern Savage steps onto the stage. McWilliams’ critique is devastating because he is so thoroughly familiar with the accounts of the very people who practice this new agriculture. In many cases, the very words of the these new farmers are more eloquent than anything we could say or add. The problems of nonindustrial agriculture are quite significant. McWilliams quotes from one nonindustrial chicken farmer, who poignantly notes about predation problems: “It doesn’t even take a minute for things to become utterly sad and regrettable.”

Predation is a significant problem for nonindustrial farmers, much worse than in factory farms. And death from predation can be quite grisly. Diseases are just as widespread in nonindustrial settings. Salmonella is sometimes more prevalent in a “free range” or “all natural” hens, than in their caged companions (p. 146); and internal parasites are often more common among free-range chickens than in caged birds (p. 147).

Little related to nonindustrial animal farming escapes McWilliams’ view. He looks at the emotions of animals, the mechanics of slaughter, backyard chickens, grass-fed beef, and the painful lives of pigs. The problem with industrialized animal agriculture is not the industrialization, but a more basic problem — the fact that it utilizes animals at all.

Localized cruelties are just as cruel. Even small-scale farmers often mutilate their animals in just the same ways that factory farms do: debeaking, castration without anesthesia, and so forth. One mostly-overlooked mutilation is nose rings for pigs — a mutilation which is essential on “natural” pig farms before pigs can be released into open pasture. The nose ring prevents one of the pig’s most natural behaviors, namely rooting; rooting with a nose ring is instantly and severely painful for a pig. When you hear about it, “nose rings” don’t sound that bad; but it is a special torture reserved just for the “happy pigs” when their natural rooting behavior becomes intensely painful.

What looks like a “natural” setting to our human view, is often anything but that for the animal. For “free-range” chickens, to be in an open pasture is actually an exquisite form of discomfort. Chickens are prey animals, and so to place them in open pasture is especially nerve-wracking for them because they cannot use their natural defenses. They naturally desire low overhanging branches so they can fly up into branches to protect themselves from ground predators; they also like higher tree cover to obscure them from hawks and high-flying predators.

“Do it yourself” slaughter often does not go as advertised. “Botched slaughters abound in these narratives,” McWilliams notes in examining small-scale slaughtering operations, “and are, be forewarned, disturbing.” One such account begins, “we came to believe that piercing the chicken’s brain would be the least traumatic for all involved. Not so.” Mobile slaughter units, an attempt to decentralize the slaughter process, may be marginally more “humane,” but are much more expensive and vastly more wasteful of resources than industrialized slaughterhouse facilities.

And what is the consequence of all this on the human psyche? What are backyard farmers doing to themselves when they try to “take back our food” in this primitive way? Forget about the animals for a moment — what is it doing to us? Isn’t it turning us all into monsters? McWilliams dissects the predictable rationalizations which backyard farmers often offer for the rattling of their own psyches by these obviously violent and disturbing events. “The butchers are,” McWilliams notes, “trapped in an unconscious but ingrained habit of moral disengagement.”

The Modern Savage is in the tradition of such books as Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation and shows just how far the discussion of eating animals has come in the past 40 years. It is also, at least in part, an eloquent response to Jonathan Safran Foer’s Eating Animals and Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma. Both of these latter books indicted factory farms but sought to exculpate nonindustrial animal agriculture.

McWilliams exposes the fallacy of this line of reasoning. The problem with these nonindustrial systems is that localized cruelty is still cruelty. It’s the same thing, with a new type of practitioner — the “modern savage.”

]]>http://www.compassionatespirit.com/wpblog/2015/02/23/the-modern-savage-%e2%80%94-review/feed/3God is not going to put more oil in the groundhttp://www.compassionatespirit.com/wpblog/2015/02/16/god-is-not-going-to-put-more-oil-in-the-ground/
http://www.compassionatespirit.com/wpblog/2015/02/16/god-is-not-going-to-put-more-oil-in-the-ground/#commentsMon, 16 Feb 2015 18:00:03 +0000Keith Akershttp://www.compassionatespirit.com/wpblog/?p=2284Continue reading →]]>There has been a huge drop in oil prices since last July. Many environmentalists don’t know what to make of this. Some are saying that the fall of prices should get us to rethink the “flawed” argument for peak oil, or that it will “destroy the green revolution,” or that it reflects the “existential crisis” of the environmentalists. Earth First! has chimed in as well. How can there be a shortage of oil, if prices are falling?

This is a resource depletion issue. Our current economic system cannot handle resource depletion issues. We naturally expect that as oil becomes more and more difficult to get, that the price of oil will go up and stay up.

But this is not what we observe. The price will oscillate, sometimes wildly, in one direction or the other. From 2004 to 2009, WTI prices went from about $40 / barrel up to over $130, and then back down again. It’s happening now, again, as prices have dropped from $107 last July to under $53 / barrel this morning. The prices were stable, actually, from about 2010 until 2014, staying in the $80–$100 range, but that was when we had “quantitative easing” — a complicated financial plan to stimulate the economy.

Why is this? Oil is scarce, and getting scarcer, and we’re pumping it out of the ground at over a thousand barrels a second. Yes, there are some technical issues here, but it’s not that hard to understand. Here are some things you should know about oil.

1. Prices affect producers as well as consumers. The reason that prices go up in the first place is because demand exceeds supply. But they don’t stay up, because a lot of people can’t afford those prices, so they stop buying. Then the prices come down, but they don’t stay down, because some producers can’t afford to produce (and make money) at those prices. Of course there are are some producers who can make money at low prices (e. g. Saudi Arabia), and some consumers who will buy the stuff at high prices (e. g. the rich). But overall, people are getting squeezed at both ends. The “happy medium” is steadily shrinking, as we go through the cheap oil, and as our supply of oil comes increasingly from “unconventional” and more expensive sources.

2. Oil depletion is an example of a “market failure.” Supply and demand don’t work very well for fossil fuels in a state of depletion. The market would work well if there was plenty of oil, so that all we had to worry about are things like labor and equipment. But there isn’t plenty of oil, at least not oil that everyone can afford.

In theory, it would even work if there isn’t plenty of oil but everyone knows what the true supply and demand situation is. Producers would have an incentive to leave oil in the ground, namely, the price will be higher next year, so they would have to weigh whether to make a profit now or a greater profit in the future. Some producers would opt to leave oil in the ground, which would decrease supply and force the price this year up a bit higher.

But of course it doesn’t work that way. Countries like Saudi Arabia keep their oil resources a secret, and use oil as an economic weapon. Some people have a vested interest in deliberately distorting the situation anyway, like the oil companies and their lackeys. Political events can affect the price of oil: the Middle East, Ukraine, Iran, climate change negotiations, and so forth.

Who can possibly take all of these things into account? Even though we know that oil is constantly depleting, there is no incentive to leave it in the ground. The logic of the market is, “we might as well cash in while there’s still time.” This is “market failure.”

3. Oil price demand is very “inelastic.” “Elasticity” of demand is a technical term that refers to how price-sensitive demand is to fluctuations in the price of oil. The more elastic the demand is, the more it is affected by price.

But oil price demand is not very elastic at all. We all know that if the price of oil increases by $1 a gallon tomorrow, I’ll grumble, but I’m still going to fill up my gas tank. Conversely, if the price of oil drops in half, I’ll whistle a happy tune, but I’m not going to immediately take off on a long distance trip. People and businesses only change their use of oil very slowly, so it takes a huge drop or rise in oil prices to affect demand just a little. If there’s too little oil supplied, it takes a huge run-up in prices to bring demand down to match; but conversely, if there’s too much oil supplied, it takes a huge drop in prices to bring demand back up to match. That’s what “inelastic” means. And that’s exactly what we’ve seen during the past decade.

You can see the problem already. Just a slight difference in the supply of oil could mean that fracking in Colorado is going forward — or not going forward. That is most likely what is happening right now. Saudi Arabia finds it fairly easy to put more oil on the market and increase supply; this has a big effect on oil price, because oil demand is so hard to change.

4. Low oil prices means that this expensive oil will not be extracted. That’s why we hear the cries of anguish from oil-producing areas such as North Dakota, Colorado, Alberta, and Russia, about the crash in oil prices. Russia isn’t into fracking, but they are about to go into a recession, because their economy is so oil-dependent, and they needed high oil prices as well. There’s debate about whether Saudi Arabia did this deliberately, but a lot of new fracking is likely to go by the wayside right now, just because they can’t earn enough money to justify doing it. (It won’t end all at once, because some wells are already drilled.)

5. If this expensive oil is not extracted, then we’ve hit peak oil. If you take all the unconventional (and expensive) oil production from North America out of the oil data, we have likely already hit peak oil. Conventional oil probably peaked almost a decade ago. In theory, we might discover vast deposits of conventional (and therefore cheap) oil somewhere, but the world has been fairly well explored already. Oil producers are no fools; they’re going to produce the easiest stuff first.

Realistically, if we want to raise production all we have is high-priced unconventional oil. Ron Patterson, a very knowledgeable student of the oil supply situation, recently argued that low prices mean peak oil is right now: “I am putting my reputation on the line in making the claim that the period, September 2014 through August 2015 will be the year of Peak Oil.”

I’m not the expert here. Maybe the new techniques of oil extraction won’t be quite as expensive as we thought, or perhaps the price consumers would be willing to pay for oil will be higher than we think. Or, Saudi Arabia might bring about higher prices deliberately by cutting back their supply. Or maybe the government will bring back “quantitative easing.”

All these various possibilities are just ways of shifting the cost of extracting oil around — to the producers, to the consumers, or to the government. You can slice the economic pie any way you want, but there’s only so much oil to go around, and someone’s going to have to pay for it. We need to get used to this idea. No matter what the price of oil is, God is not going to put more oil in the ground.

]]>http://www.compassionatespirit.com/wpblog/2015/02/16/god-is-not-going-to-put-more-oil-in-the-ground/feed/7“Animals in Earliest Christianity”http://www.compassionatespirit.com/wpblog/2015/02/02/animals-in-earliest-christianity/
http://www.compassionatespirit.com/wpblog/2015/02/02/animals-in-earliest-christianity/#commentsMon, 02 Feb 2015 13:00:14 +0000Keith Akershttp://www.compassionatespirit.com/wpblog/?p=2277Continue reading →]]>I will be giving a talk on “Animals in Earliest Christianity” to the Animal Rights Academy in Toronto this Tuesday. Alas, I will not be there physically, but I’ll Skype in via computer, and I understand that the conversation can go in both directions and we’ll have questions and answers.

The talk is free, so if you’re in the area, I hope you can make it and we can talk about such questions as: what was the attitude of the earliest Christians towards animals? Was Jesus, or anyone else, a vegetarian? Is animal rights compatible with Christianity? And perhaps the most puzzling question of all, should we care?

Is anyone paying attention? In an ideal world, the public would be outraged by this. Congressional committees would study the problem. Students would demand courses on soil preservation. But back in the real world, farmland just isn’t that big of a deal. After all, agriculture is just a very small part of the U. S. economy. We could also debate whether this is an exaggeration. Perhaps we have 100, or even 200 years of farming left!

This kind of blindness to an obvious issue demands comment. Without oil, it’s back to the horse and buggy, I suppose. But without farmland, it’s back to — what? Hunting and gathering? Hunting and gathering would support humanity only if population were reduced by about 99.9%. Soil is the basis of all life. Suppose that scientists announced that a giant asteroid was going to hit the earth 60 years from now, annihilating 99.9% of the human race. We’d be paying attention.

Distinguished ecologist David Pimentel and others have warned that soil is eroding many times faster than it is being formed. To form an inch of topsoil takes centuries; but soil erosion is progressing many times faster than that. In the United States, soil is eroding at about the rate of 10 tons / hectare / year (1 hectare = 2.47 acres). However, soil is formed only at about a rate of ½ to 1 ton / hectare / year, so soil erosion is 10–20 times greater than soil formation. In Asia and Africa, the rate of erosion is even greater, on the order of 30 to 80 times greater than the rate of soil formation. This is patently unsustainable.

Food is a complex topic. We could go to organic farming, and that would help preserve the soil. But it isn’t clear (to me, at least) that organic farming would scale up enough to feed the world. The yields per acre for organic versus conventional agriculture are comparable, but maintaining soil fertility would become an issue. Right now, artificial fertilizers provide a lot of soil fertility, and to compensate for the “loss” of the artificial fertilizers, you would need additional land in some form — either to grow plant manures, to support animals that would provide manure, to remain fallow, or to grow a cover crop. “No-till” agriculture is highly mechanized and requires extra herbicides — definitely not an “organic” alternative. On the other hand, conventional agriculture is quite destructive to the soil, so none of our choices are good.

We don’t face a shortage of this or that; we are generally facing the limits to growth. Ballpark, back-of-the-envelope calculations seem to indicate that a sustainable agriculture would require that the entire world go vegan and that we reduce the human population by about 80%. Vegans need to understand how serious our environmental situation is; people just have no idea of the extent to which humans have overrun the earth and vastly overshot their resources. There is hope for the future, but we need to radically rethink our whole approach to the economy and nature.

]]>http://www.compassionatespirit.com/wpblog/2015/01/26/soil-erosion-%e2%80%94-is-anyone-paying-attention/feed/2How can we ask them not to eat meat?http://www.compassionatespirit.com/wpblog/2015/01/19/how-can-we-ask-them-to-give-up-meat/
http://www.compassionatespirit.com/wpblog/2015/01/19/how-can-we-ask-them-to-give-up-meat/#commentsMon, 19 Jan 2015 13:00:18 +0000Keith Akershttp://www.compassionatespirit.com/wpblog/?p=2215Continue reading →]]>In a recent Go Vegan radio interview, Leslie Goldberg (author of the Vicious Vegan blog) gave an account of a conversation she had with Bill McKibben. (McKibben is a noted environmentalist and a co-founder of 350.org.) Leslie asked McKibben why he didn’t talk about meat consumption as a cause of climate change. McKibben first pointed out that most of the growth in meat consumption comes from the developing countries. Somewhat irritated, he then asked (in effect) “how can you ask people who are just starting to be able to afford and enjoy meat, not to eat meat?”

This is an intelligent question, so I thought I’d attempt to answer it. How, indeed, can we ask people in China and India, who are just now able to afford meat, not to eat meat?

Here is my suggested answer: “We are making a revolution. Want to join us?”

As a practical matter, there is no way that you are going to actually deal with climate change without some sort of massive upsurge of veganism. Livestock agriculture contributes over half of all human-caused greenhouse gas emissions. If McKibben doesn’t believe this, then we need to have a dialogue about the science involved. Even most vegans do not understand how much of the biosphere of the earth is under the control of humans. Over 90% of the biomass of all mammals is humans, their livestock, and their pets. You can’t believe that all that manure, all the methane, all the carbon dioxide that these animals breathe out, and all the endless forests chopped down, doesn’t affect the climate at some point.

Certainly we should not ask anything of China and India that we would not ask of ourselves. We should go vegan ourselves before asking others to do so. But the situation is ironic, because a key reason that the developing countries increased their meat consumption in the first place was western imperialism. Before that, China and India had held (and to a great extent still do hold) the world’s most developed vegetarian traditions. But now if western vegetarians want to say “actually, you were better off with your traditional foods,” we can’t say that, because we don’t want to impose our values on them? Excuse me?

Perhaps McKibben is concerned about the self-righteous reaction of the newly wealthy Chinese? Possibly, but he shouldn’t be. It looks like the Chinese are beginning to figure all of this out on their own. China’s vegetarian population is the largest of any country in the world — 50 million vegetarians. Long Kuan, a Chinese resident and vegan activist, notes a rising trend towards vegetarianism: “The young generation, especially, they love to be eco-friendly, and they love to be compassionate. And they really care about the environment and the quality of life, about pollution.”

A much more formidable obstacle is the reaction of the environmental movement right here in the United States. Environmental organizations have taken note of the movie Cowspiracy, but they also seem to be dependent on large donations from wealthy cattle ranchers. But they keep veganism at a distance at their peril. We need some leadership here. Eventually, this leadership will come, but it may not be the current leadership of environmental groups.

Environmentalists have failed to provide concrete, workable plans to stop climate change. We need something more than just throwing up a bunch of solar panels and wind turbines all over the landscape, although we should probably do that too. Our environmental crisis is much bigger than climate change, although climate change is very important. It’s also about mass extinctions, soil erosion, deforestation, peak oil, and economic collapse. We need basic social, cultural, political, and lifestyle changes.

The vegan movement has quite a bit to offer to the environmentalists. This is a dynamic, growing, diverse, and energetic movement. Most vegans understand that there’s more to saving the planet than just going vegan. If we all go vegan, but keep burning coal, driving cars, and overpopulating the planet, in the end our veganism will only have bought us a bit of extra time. But while veganism is not sufficient to deal with our environmental problems, it is necessary. You can build all the solar panels and wind turbines you want, but in the end we have to save the plants and animals on the earth.

]]>http://www.compassionatespirit.com/wpblog/2015/01/19/how-can-we-ask-them-to-give-up-meat/feed/5Norm Phelps (1939–2014)http://www.compassionatespirit.com/wpblog/2015/01/13/norm-phelps-1939%e2%80%932014/
http://www.compassionatespirit.com/wpblog/2015/01/13/norm-phelps-1939%e2%80%932014/#commentsTue, 13 Jan 2015 13:00:54 +0000Keith Akershttp://www.compassionatespirit.com/wpblog/?p=2205Continue reading →]]>Norm Phelps died on December 31, 2014. An activist in the promotion of vegetarianism, veganism, and compassion for animals in spiritual traditions, he authored numerous books and articles.

He followed both the Tibetan Buddhist tradition and the Unitarian Universalist tradition — neither of which, he noted, is exclusive. But he was raised as a Baptist and a Methodist and wrote about Christianity and animals as well.

Norm’s books included The Dominion of Love: Animal Rights According to the Bible (2002), The Great Compassion: Buddhism and Animal Rights (2004), and The Longest Struggle: Animal Advocacy from Pythagoras to PETA (2007), all published by Lantern Books of New York. His most recent book is Changing the Game: Animal Liberation in the Twenty-First Century, which Lantern will release in its paperback version today (the Kindle edition, with a different subtitle, was released in 2013).

He was also active in numerous organizations. He co-founded the Society of Ethical and Religious Vegetarians (SERV), and worked in and with numerous other groups, such as the Fund for Animals, the Humane Society of the United States, Compassion Over Killing, Dharma Voices for Animals, and Unitarian-Universalists for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (UFETA). He engaged in a lengthy public dialogue critical of the Dalai Lama because of the Dalai Lama’s eating of meat, saying “there is no principle in Buddhism more important than compassion, not even reverence for our teachers.”

Perhaps he will be most immediately missed as a voice in the Unitarian-Universalist (UU) debate over animals. In 2011 he made extensive comments on the draft UU statement of conscience on “Ethical Eating,” calling it “profoundly flawed.” Just last fall he wrote “History Has Passed Us By: An Open Letter to My Fellow UUs on Animal Liberation.” He supported the effort to change the first principle of UUs, which currently requires UUs to affirm “the inherent worth and dignity of every person,” to instead affirm “the inherent worth and dignity of every being,” that is, to include animals.

If you’re in the DC area, Norm’s wife Patti Rogers and Compassion Over Killing are sponsoring a celebration of Norm’s life on January 18 in Takoma Park, Maryland. You can RSVP here at the Compassion Over Killing page for Norm Phelps.

5280 The Denver Magazine recently featured an article on “Everyday Environmentalists,” presenting over 40 ways to live greener. Pointing out that Coloradans are not as environmentally virtuous as we may think we are, the article featured excellent advice on such topics as home insulation, composting, gardening, biking–the usual and more. Some items were very detailed, such as the advice to buy a live Christmas tree instead of an artificial one, and then plant it outside. Readers who hike popular mountain trails were encouraged to go during the week so as to increase the likelihood that they will stay on the trail and minimize trail deterioration. Yes, yes, yes, I’m saying to myself as I read, but when do we get to the huge environmental impact of meat consumption?

In the 5280 article–a full eight pages of (mostly) small-print–meat gets exactly one sentence, about grass-fed beef. One sentence! Easily the most important thing Coloradans and everybody else can do to clean up the environment is to reduce–or ideally eliminate–the consumption of meat, eggs, and dairy products. Every meatless meal makes a measurable difference. Furthermore, making these dietary changes doesn’t require some new product or major political or corporate change. Individuals can do it one choice at a time in their own homes or at restaurants with nothing more complex than their forks.

While I don’t fault anyone for wanting to replace their Windex with vinegar and cornstarch, or renting a baler for their recyclables, let’s get real: livestock agriculture dwarfs every other human activity in terms of its destructive environmental impact. Changing our diet is far and away the “greenest” thing each of us can do.

What makes a popular blog post — one that gets a lot of hits? Sometimes I work carefully on a post that seems timely and relevant, and it goes over like a lead balloon. At other times, I just summarize things that I think everyone knows already, and bang, it’s a hit. Thank you, Google, and thank you, Facebook. But for what it’s worth, here are Compassionate Spirit’s top 10 popular blog posts in 2014. As one might expect from the fact that I just published Disciples a year ago, religion and vegetarianism rates highly. The most popular blog, though, was about the arrest of lauren Ornelas during a protest of Whole Foods for their selling rabbit meat. One surprise to me is that fully half of the posts that made it into this list were written prior to 2014, so apparently at least some of my old posts have continuing value.

3. Vegans and Strokes
(From 2013) I credit Google searches on “vegans strokes” for the popularity of this article, which was basically just my account of my own stroke in 2012.

4. The Essenes and the Dead Sea Scrolls
(From 2012) Philo and Josephus describe the Essenes as a group that is pacifist, against animal sacrifice, probably vegetarian, and neo-Pythagorean. They are completely different from the authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls, who are militaristic, own slaves, sacrifice animals, and eat meat.

6. This Just In: Ancient Temple was a Slaughterhouse!
(From 2013) This study on animal bones in ancient Jerusalem confirms what ancient writers told us — animal sacrifice was a big business in the first century CE. So it really was a big deal when Jesus disrupted this enterprise.

9. Vegan Looks for a Church
I had fun interviewing Peg Farrar, a local vegan activist and Christian, who was not in a church, but looking for one to join. I got a large number of intelligent comments to this article; by sharing our experiences, perhaps we can learn something.

]]>http://www.compassionatespirit.com/wpblog/2014/12/31/most-popular-blog-posts-in-2014/feed/1Peak oil may be almost herehttp://www.compassionatespirit.com/wpblog/2014/12/15/peak-oil-may-be-almost-here/
http://www.compassionatespirit.com/wpblog/2014/12/15/peak-oil-may-be-almost-here/#commentsMon, 15 Dec 2014 13:00:08 +0000Keith Akershttp://www.compassionatespirit.com/wpblog/?p=2155Continue reading →]]>“Predictions are difficult, especially about the future.” This aphorism is nowhere more applicable than when predicting the date of “peak oil” — the maximum point of world oil production. In case you hadn’t noticed, oil prices are falling dramatically. Until about six months ago, oil (“West Texas Intermediate”) had hovered for several years in the region of $100 a barrel, reaching $107 on July 23. But by last Friday (December 12), it was below $60. If we’re close to peak oil, and oil is getting scarce, shouldn’t the price be going up? What happened, and why?

Oil underlies much of the U. S. economy. It’s the leading source of energy, and is absolutely indispensable in transportation. Renewable energy sources are not even close to substituting for oil; it would take decades and trillions of dollars, if it could be done at all. It is a very big deal, with huge financial implications, if we hit the maximum point of oil production. If the price of oil is too high, then people won’t be able to afford it and will cut back; but if it’s too low, producers won’t be able to extract it and make a profit. This latter problem seems to be happening now.

About a decade ago, predictions of peak oil proliferated. Petroleum geologist Kenneth Deffeyes famously said that peak oil arrived in 2005. The Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas, U. S. A. (ASPO-USA) thought that oil would peak by 2015, and Richard Heinberg, in his widely-read book The Party’s Over, agreed. (Conceivably, it might still happen by the end of 2015.)

When oil prices shot up to $147 a barrel in 2008, only to crash later in the year as we witnessed a near-collapse of the world financial system, a lot of us thought, “this is it — this is peak oil.” But then the previous peak was surpassed, and surpassed again. Oil prices went up, but still seemed to be basically affordable. Oil production didn’t go up by much, but it did go up, ever so slightly. What happened? Why were the predictions of peak oil wrong, or at least premature?

Peak Oil Delayed

The basic answer is three-fold: fracking, higher prices, and debt.

We’ve known for years about hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, a technique for getting oil out of the ground. It was never used, because it was quite expensive for producers, so why bother, as long as there is plenty of conventional oil? But then there were shortages of conventional oil, with a run-up in oil prices which led to the oil price spike of 2008. In the recovery from the Great Recession, oil prices stabilized in the hitherto-unheard of region of $100 a barrel, and presto, suddenly fracking (and other expensive techniques like the Alberta tar sands) became economically feasible.

When the price of oil went up, the game changed. In 1999, the price of oil was just over $10 a barrel. But it has risen steadily, first to $30, then $70, and then for several years held fairly steady in the region of $100 a barrel. This isn’t good, but at least the oil is there, if you want to pay for it.

So can we just raise the price of oil indefinitely, continuing down to extract more and more expensive oil, thus extending the oil age for a long time? Well, not exactly. At some point, people are not going to be able to afford oil; or alternatively, they’ll be able to buy oil but only by cutting back something else. But just as the price of oil can go too high for consumers to afford, the price of oil can also be too low for at least some producers, if they are forced out of business when their extraction costs exceed the market price of oil.

This raises the final reason that peak oil has not arrived: massive levels of debt. In the wake of the Great Recession, the Federal Reserve implemented a complex strategy of “quantitative easing” (QE for short) to stimulate the economy. QE basically makes it easier to borrow money. It worked, sort of; the economy perked up a bit, although the recovery has been somewhat weak. There are jobs, but many of them don’t pay that well. But it’s certainly better in that respect than the Great Recession.

Why Are Oil Prices Falling?

This leads us to the current wrinkle in the peak oil story. Why have oil prices, which had been steady at around $100 a barrel for years, suddenly dropped to just below $60 a barrel? There are two popular answers for the current piece of the “why” part: QE (quantitative easing) is ending, and “Saudi Arabia.”

World liquids production and oil price, with labels for beginning and end of QE (thanks to OurFiniteWorld.com)

The fact that QE is ending suggests that actually, at $100 a barrel, the price of oil was already too high for many consumers, but the low interest rates from QE kept the economy going anyway, albeit at a slower pace. But now that QE is ending, people are deciding that they really can’t afford to buy as much stuff after all. For producers of expensive fracked oil, this is a possibly fatal obstacle, because with low oil prices they will not be able to make a profit. Low oil prices will stimulate Americans to take long trips, but if the frackers go out of business and people don’t have jobs, then people aren’t going to be financially able to take long road trips.

A second part of the answer to “why?” is “Saudi Arabia.” In the old days, Saudi Arabia and OPEC would have just cut back their oil production to keep prices up. This is a classic oil industry strategy, initiated over 70 years ago in Texas so that all the oil producers would make a reasonable profit; and later OPEC took up that role for the Middle East. But for some reason, Saudi Arabia isn’t sticking to the script here. They evidently want “market share” and possibly want to drive the U. S. shale oil producers out of business. Low oil prices also hurt the other producers that Saudi Arabia isn’t fond of, like Iran and Russia. It seems likely that if oil prices fall low enough, at least some frackers will be forced out of business. A lot of shale oil producers are heavily in debt, and depend on high-yielding “junk bonds” to stay afloat. According to an article in the Telegraph for November 14, if oil prices fall to $60 a barrel (which is where we now are!), it could trigger a wave of defaults in up to 30% of all the “sub-investment grade” borrowers, and create a major financial crisis in the United States. Russia also relies heavily on oil income from high oil prices, and Russia recently admitted that they will enter a recession in 2015 as a result.

It’s possible that $100 a barrel for oil is already too high for a viable economy. Perhaps the only thing propping the economy up with $100 per barrel oil, so far, has been QE? Is the network of fracking, debt, and higher prices beginning to unravel? I don’t have the ability to forecast this sort of thing. Many popular commentators have been saying that peak oil is a “dead,” a long time in the future, but we could be hitting peak oil sooner than they thought.

Or not. Humans likely have the physical capacity to keep pumping oil for some time to come. If the President wants to send in troops to keep the oil fields in Colorado operating, regardless of the cost, it could be done. Perhaps not quite as extreme would be reviving QE, bailing out struggling U. S. oil companies, or persuading Saudi Arabia to cut back production.

But the costs of doing this are escalating. Our ability to pump oil is now fraying on our economic and political resources. The peak oil crisis, when it comes, may not “look” like peak oil at all; it may look like an economic or a political crisis. The root cause is still resource depletion generally, and oil depletion in particular. We don’t know the exact way events will unfold, but until we change our attitudes towards the earth and nature generally, these problems will continue to multiply.